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The menstrual cup chronicles continue. I started with a SilkyCup gifted to me by Reema. After a lot of teething pains (birthing pains?), I established a relationship with this piece of silicon and got used to putting it up my lady business every month.

A HUGE part of developing a comfort with menstrual cups is the safety valve that the stem provides, that you can just yank out anytime. No, not really, it doesn’t really work that way since after the first couple of months or so, my vag began swallowing up the entire cup, stem and all. I’m assured that is is quite normal, in fact the right way to wear it. Getting it out proves to be awkward but possible since when you reach the tip of the stem you can tugtug it out. By the time I got to this place with my cup, it had already discoloured. Also it continued to still leak.

Figuring it must be a size misfit and that I was ‘grown-up’ enough to buy one for myself, I bought a SheCup. This one was a real adventure because it came without a stem (thus nullifying the ‘vagitail’). The SheCup is also made of a slightly firmer material than the SilkyCup which means it pops open once inside you. I’ll admit the theory sounded fine and truly, in the last few months, I’ve sprung very few leaks if at all. I’ve even gone on all day, including outside with zero fuss (I even wore a thong once). The only trouble if at all was that it went in so snugly, I was always afraid I’d forget it was in there. So I’ve gotten used to placing an alarm for myself every few hours to ‘Remove cup’.

In December, I had one alarming episode where I reached in at the end of the day and found my finger poking into thin air. Thin air inside me? Am I actually a mannequin then? It turned out that the cup had turned ALL the way around inside me. It wasn’t actually as bad as it sounds. I had to get a grip on a side and slide/slip/scratch it out. Soreness around the vaginal area had also been noted around the end of Day 2. But well, nothing gained overnight, I was just glad to be rid of the pain of sanitary napkins.

February was an admittedly tough month for me periodwise and otherwise. What is otherwise? Any fusses and stresses you face in life show up in your monthly visitor. Your period is like your auditor of your wellbeing and health. February was very little of that, given a lot of things. It started on a high-stress sudden summer day when I was rushing out for an important client meeting. Anticipating the calendar, I plugged in the cup and off I went. Midmorning bathroom break revealed stained panties. In the middle of a makeshift office bathroom, I scrabbled around inside me only to find that the cup had moved around 90 degrees. This had to be the worst of the cup woes, I decided. It took me ten minutes, a sprained wrist and an almost injured pubic bone to get that damn cup out. That should have been it.

Then on the morning of day 3, I woke up in a pool of blood. Okay, a puddle. But still, after 20-odd years of periods, one has gotten quite used to managing the blood flow. It’s a wee bit embarrassing and annoying for this to happen. No, I kid. It’s bloody terrifying, pun intended.

Sheets yanked off in disgust, I trudged to the bathroom still mostly asleep. I don’t know if it was the grogginess or the cup misbehaving but I struggled to reach it. When I finally did – and I have no idea how this happened – IT JUST EFFING FELL OUT. Fell into the pot. I cried.

I spent the rest of the period with my leaky old SilkyCup and plenty of pads. So let’s just say that the cup isn’t the magical cure to all menstrual nightmares. I’m still soldiering on and going menstrual-cup shopping again. This time, I think I’ll pick up a cup with a stem again. I guess the SheCup was a tad too small for me, giving it play to move around. And its stemlessness probably made it easier. A stem should prevent it from doing this bloody spinning thing

Wish me luck and here’s hoping third time’s the charm. I’ll post an unboxing video when the new cup/cups arrive.

PMS: Three syllables that could rock your world. But what does this word mean? As a man, it is one of those words you never want to use to describe away women’s seemingly irrational behaviour. Unless you want to hear a very loud and shrill rant. Or if you know the women I do, get a prompt kick in the crown jewels. For women, it is the constant irritation of dealing with pop culture and stand-up comedians love affair with PMS jokes.

But is the alternative to making crass oversimplifications, just shutting up? I think not. The fact is, in our increasingly politically correct world, we do not address some things just to pacify, well, the angry women. The women whose eyebrows go up when you mention PMS and tell you “Don’t even think about it!”

Now here’s my problem with that. Society and culture thrives on making certain topics taboo- female sexuality, periods, rape, etc. When you cannot even talk about something openly, it provides a connotation of shame to it. How do you expect women to believe there is no shame in their being women when everything about their bodies is brushed under the carpets as ‘inappropriate’?And it is that culture that tolerates locking up women when they menstruate, treating them as social outcasts and of course dismissing them as professionals. For years, men thought women could not be involved in outdoors activities and professions because of- wait for it- menstruation!

This was fine in the world that was but it cannot be a part of the world the Modern Man seeks to build. In order to deconstruct what he has been raised to believe he needs to understand. So women can continue to be overly sensitive about words like ‘vagina‘ and ‘PMS‘ and god knows what else. But the Modern Man is not a gentleman. He is no knight in shining armour. He has little patience or indulgence for your baggage and who has been oppressing you.

The fact is, the more ‘secretive’ and ‘inappropriate’ any topic is deemed, the more power it has to dominate and repress people. So what we propose is this: rob it of its power by taking away the secretiveness. That is the key to a lot of the issues that come with the conversation on gender. It certainly is the key to this one.

And if you want, I can start. Men don’t hate talking because they think it’s a bore. Men hate talking because most women don’t really want to hear what they have to say. And ignorance breeds bigotry. Or in this case- sexism.

Image via Wikipedia

I will end with a quote from South Park by the delightfully offensive Mr. Garrison:

“I’m sorry, Wendy, but I don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

Sure, you can call him a chauvinist pig. But what then? What then indeed.

And now that I’m a self-confessed Android junkie, I’ve progressed from games to the other delights that the Market offers. Out of curiosity, I went looking for what this ‘techy’ bazaar had to specially offer a woman. I was hit by a barrage of menstrual-cycle linked apps. Of course, a mobilephone is a daily companion and who knows the value of a calendar better than a woman who has to figure out clothing, commute, food, grooming and schedule by predicting her body’s cycle?

Of the apps I looked at, WomanLog Calendar appealed the most to me. The app begins with a 5-step process (of which 2 are the ‘Welcome to this app’ and the ‘Congratulations, you’re in!’ announcements). The only really key part of this process is step 2, where you enter your average menstrual cycle length and the average length of your period, both in days. After that, you pick the beginning day of the week, set language and you’re done.

The app then opens up into a pink * cringe at the stereotyping* calendar. You enter your period cycle by clicking on a date, which takes you to a push-button screen. Here you can select the start & end dates. In addition you can also include details such as birth control pill consumption, Basal Metabolic Temperature (BMT), sexual activity, weight and notes. Other features include charts tracking weight and temperature.

Thoughtfully, a password-protect feature has also been provided to keep those prying eyes (or fingers) away from such intimate details. This is particularly interesting since a mobilephone is open to far more scrutiny and non-secure access than a computer.

Once I got over the pinkness of this app, I realised it was probably a must-have addition to Marvin. I’ve just added it so I can’t tell how good the charting will be, as yet but I see no reason they shouldn’t work right. The paid version, WomanLog Pro Calendar also lets one enter mood, cervical mucus (presumably to track infections) and provides notifications, which sound like great features to add to an already decent app.

I haven’t been particularly health-conscious but the past few years have made me painfully aware that I’m not a teenager anymore. I spend most weekends catching up on a massive sleep debt accumulated during the week. The Android Market had something to say on this.

SleepBot Tracker Logsounded like it would be a stern mommy-figure type, wagging its finger in admonition at the unhealthy lifestyles of today. But instead, it turned out to be a sensible, easy-to-use app for the sleep-deprived advanced smartphone user segment of today. On installing the app, the first thing you can do is take a Sleep Debt Index Quiz, which looks at how sleepy you are likely to get in the afternoons, during phone conversations, commuting and other such drowsiness-striken situations. Based on this, you are given a Sleep Debt Index which tells you how sleep-deprived you are.

You use the app to track your sleeping patterns by clicking ‘Sleep’ when you fall asleep and ‘Wake up’ when you do. Alternately, you can also manually input the times of these two events. SleepBot logs the hours slept & napped and tracks the sleep debt you accumulate. You can change the settings to reflect what you think is optimal sleep amount for you.

Over time, the app graphs your sleep records to show you the fluctuations in your cycle. Other features include auto-flight mode (avoid calls in sleep), auto-silence during sleep, WiFi off when sleep button pushed, idle threshold (to determine when sleeping) and sleep/wake reminder text.

There is also a wealth of handy somna-related resources such as a Caffeine Content Chart, Sleep-inducing foods and a Bedside Necessities list. SleepBot also offers information on the nature of Sleep Debt, Sleep Disorders, Diagnostic tests and associated health problems. And finally, it offers quick tips on sleeping well.

All in all, SleepBot feels like a comprehensive sleep-related app and a very relevant one for the typical target user of smartphone. SleepBot Tracker Log is a product of SleepBotand is available for download in the Android Market.

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* This is a one-off app review on XX Factor since it involves women’s health. For more, see Marvin’s World.